21.24% wins ACBL Masterpoints

[42krunner]

This might be a record, or at least that I have seen.

 

I just finished a 12-board MP ACBL Robo-dup.

29 People started, so I guess it was stratified 9/10/10 which means top 4 in C pays master points.

 

I finished 3A/1B/1C, with the large field this awards .90 to 1st B as well as 1st A.

 

Here is the amazing thing.

Eight people quit, of those 6 must have been C's since all 4 C players that did not quit won master points, including the player that finished last OA with a 21.24%! :)

 

Link

[dave251164]

The scoring system used is absolutely ridiculous - an abomination!

0.17 points for 21.24%?!?!? When those who came 13th and 14th with more than double the score got nothing and 5th place with 57.9% only had marginally more points with 0.18 points.

A stratified game may benefit the novices by initially assuming that they are not expected to beat the experts, but still allows them to reap the master-point rewards if they accidentally do, but they randomise the results of a tourney by who they gift ridiculous tops too! Stratification should be banned for being a money, master-point and ego raising exercise and because of the randomisation effect it has on the top places. Stick to flighted tourneys or at least see how many novices would play if the scoring was simply the higher you place percentage wise the more you get and whatever amount of points and gradation of those points down the list - but only to the top third of the field, as why reward mediocrity?!

[ArtK78]

The scoring system used is absolutely ridiculous - an abomination!

0.17 points for 21.24%?!?!? When those who came 13th and 14th with more than double the score got nothing and 5th place with 57.9% only had marginally more points with 0.18 points.

A stratified game may benefit the novices by initially assuming that they are not expected to beat the experts, but still allows them to reap the master-point rewards if they accidentally do, but they randomise the results of a tourney by who they gift ridiculous tops too! Stratification should be banned for being a money, master-point and ego raising exercise and because of the randomisation effect it has on the top places. Stick to flighted tourneys or at least see how many novices would play if the scoring was simply the higher you place percentage wise the more you get and whatever amount of points and gradation of those points down the list - but only to the top third of the field, as why reward mediocrity?!

I would not refer to 21.24% as mediocrity. It is extremely difficult to score that low over 12 boards. That takes special talent.

[42krunner]

The 21.24% getting points is an anomaly from 6 of 10 C players dropping out. While there are valid reasons not to like masterpoints, this is just one to enjoy an innocent chuckle at.

[Hanoi5]

So, nobody had noticed that ranking systems in bridge usually award participation instead of performance?

[Bbradley62]

Some of this strangeness would be reduced if ACBL treated online games more similarly to f2f games (tournaments and/or clubs) and suspended people who left prematurely. Maybe allow a little leeway for connectivity issues, but make it clear that failing to finish is unacceptable behavior.

[ArtK78]

Some of this strangeness would be reduced if ACBL treated online games more similarly to f2f games (tournaments and/or clubs) and suspended people who left prematurely. Maybe allow a little leeway for connectivity issues, but make it clear that failing to finish is unacceptable behavior.

There are many reasons why players drop out of BBO games that do not merit any punishment. Loss of internet is the most common reason. Lately, I have played some games late at night, and I wake up to find that I fell asleep in the middle of the game. Despite what some of my partners may think, I have never fallen asleep in the middle of a live game.

 

And who knows what real life issues may arise while someone is participating in an online game.

 

Besides everything else, no one is really harmed if someone drops out of a robot game. It doesn't upset the movement. All that really happens is that the player who dropped out is ineligible for any masterpoint award, and is considered to finish behind all those who do play all of the boards. Is that so bad?

 

A few times I fell asleep in the middle of a pair game on BBO. That does annoy people, but mostly my partner, who then has to put up with a substitute.

[TylerE]

Art...it's not quite so innocent as that. Someone who drops can immediately start a new tourney. If money wasn't a factor someone could just play, say, the first 3 boards, and if not averaging at least 75% just drop.

[barmar]

There are many reasons why players drop out of BBO games that do not merit any punishment. Loss of internet is the most common reason. Lately, I have played some games late at night, and I wake up to find that I fell asleep in the middle of the game.

I've done that, too. It's especially easy when playing on a tablet while leaning back on the reclining chair.

 

I remember when I was a novice and playing at one of my first nationals (almost 20 years ago). I played in a stratified side game and got some points in strat C for a 38% game. Not as extreme as this 21% game, but I did feel kind of embarassed getting points while being so far below average.

[nekthen]

A simple change would be to not award masterpoints for a score of 50% or less

[mediesel]

I believe it is illegal to drop out of an ACBL session and enter another ACBL event before that first session ends. If so, BBO SOFTWARE SHOULD ENFORCE.

[Mbodell]

Some of this strangeness would be reduced if ACBL treated online games more similarly to f2f games (tournaments and/or clubs) and suspended people who left prematurely. Maybe allow a little leeway for connectivity issues, but make it clear that failing to finish is unacceptable behavior.

 

There is also some strangeness in the fact that BBO optimizes the strats to have the optimal number in each strat to maximize the MP. Rather than the more common fixed strats (everyone with less than 750 is C, everyone with 750-2000 is B, 2000+ is A or whatever). Some club directors do that same sort of thing, but it isn't as common or as efficiently done as BBO does.

[bobcandoit]

Let's face it, "points" are the addictive product of the ACBL, and one of the goals is to give them out to get people at all skill levels to play, and hence pay more. But in the case cited you can make a math argument for 29% being a good result in that particular field. Grab a glass of wine. The field started as 9/10/10 and we can assume it ended as 8/9/4. Now I'm sure the 9 A players all thought the should have won. A 62% game usually wins, so let's assume that is their average. That means the 8 players would contribute 23.6% to the overall 50% average of the entire field. - 8 / 21 x 62%. The 9 B players would all assume they are better then average, so let's say they expected a 55% game - their contribution to the overall would be 9 / 21 x 55% or also 23.6% - just a coincidence. That totals 47.2% and leaves 2.8% for the 4 lowly C strata players. Solve the equation 4 / 21 x ? = 2.8%?suggests in this elite field they could aspire to a 14.7% game on average. It looks like all 4 C strata players exceeded expectations, so why shouldn't they all earn points? QED

[Bbradley62]

Let's face it, "points" are the addictive product of the ACBL, and one of the goals is to give them out to get people at all skill levels to play, and hence pay more. But in the case cited you can make a math argument for 29% being a good result in that particular field. Grab a glass of wine. The field started as 9/10/10 and we can assume it ended as 8/9/4. Now I'm sure the 9 A players all thought the should have won. A 62% game usually wins, so let's assume that is their average. That means the 8 players would contribute 23.6% to the overall 50% average of the entire field. - 8 / 21 x 62%. The 9 B players would all assume they are better then average, so let's say they expected a 55% game - their contribution to the overall would be 9 / 21 x 55% or also 23.6% - just a coincidence. That totals 47.2% and leaves 2.8% for the 4 lowly C strata players. Solve the equation 4 / 21 x ? = 2.8%?suggests in this elite field they could aspire to a 14.7% game on average. It looks like all 4 C strata players exceeded expectations, so why shouldn't they all earn points? QED

Your assumptions are so bad that it's absurd.

 

Take the field you started with: 9/10/10. The worst that the 10 C pairs can do it to never beat or even tie any of the A/B pairs on any of the boards. (Yes, this is virtually impossible, but it's the absolutely worst-case scenario.) In this case, the Flt C players would average 4.5 matchpoints out of 28 available per board, for an average score of 16%. So, even this absurd presumption leads to a score higher than the one you managed to calculate. And we all know that some Flt C players do beat some Flt B players (and even some Flt A) because flights are based on masterpoints, not actual skill level. (In the posted example, the third best Flt C player finished 9th overall, and the median of the 9 Flt A players who finished was 53.80%.) Maybe you've already had too much wine.

[soupyd]

acbl life master status a joke and only a carrot dangled to keep the masses paying and chasing. <_< <_<

[ArtK78]

Art...it's not quite so innocent as that. Someone who drops can immediately start a new tourney. If money wasn't a factor someone could just play, say, the first 3 boards, and if not averaging at least 75% just drop.

The software allows one to withdraw from a tourney. And one can, in fact, immediately start a new tourney. However, there is a limit of 2 tourneys per hour. So withdrawing from one tourney isn't done solely for that reason, as you can finish a tourney and start another one and still be within the one hour limitation. I have often played two tourneys to completion and tried to enter a third only to be told that I could not do so.

 

If the tournament organizers felt that withdrawing from a tourney and joining a new one was improper, it is an easy matter to fix. But clearly there is no problem with that.

[Vampyr]

Are online masterpoints worth the same as regular ones?

[barmar]

There is also some strangeness in the fact that BBO optimizes the strats to have the optimal number in each strat to maximize the MP.

We do the same thing in our f2f club. If we used fixed strats, we would often have almost everyone in A and C, with hardly anyone in B.

 

Fixed strats are normal in tournaments, but I'll bet lots of clubs are like ours. And what BBO calls "tourmanents" are actually considered club games.

[barmar]

Are online masterpoints worth the same as regular ones?

Yes, but they have no color. So they don't count towards the requirement of a certain number of points of each color to become a Life Master.

 

Until a couple of years ago there was also a restriction that only 1/3 of the points used to reach each masterpoint milestone could be won online. But they got rid of that rule.

 

Also, online games don't award as many masterpoints as similar-sized f2f club games. Our games are only 12 boards, and to award the full number of masterpoints we would have to have at least 18 boards.

[1eyedjack]

No-one is going to get rich scoring 21% on a regular basis. If some freak of circumstances allows the occasional 21% to get a princely 0.07 master points, no harm done I say. At least, not sufficient (of itself) to call the system so broken as to require redesign.

[barmar]

You could even consider it a feature. Flighting and stratifying are ways to allow even poor players to occasionally win things, which keeps them from being totally discouraged and giving up on the game. They don't win a lot, most of the masterpoints still go to the good players, so it's not that unbalanced.

[Bbradley62]

The stratification is so bogus. I just completed a 26-player (non ACBL) MP Robodupe; 9A, 8B, 9C. The top 8 finishers were 1A, 3B and 4C. (The A was 4th.) Best I can tell, this is not really standard, but the C strata fairly consistently holds its own with the others.

 

This has been covered in other threads, but... as a member of C strata (since I have very few BBO masterpoints), I hate seeing my in-game standing with respect to my strata -- I'd much prefer to see my overall position. Maybe this is different in ACBL games if you're using ACBL masterpoints, as there may be a stronger correlation between masterpoint holding and skill level.

[1eyedjack]

I hate seeing my in-game standing with respect to my strata -- I'd much prefer to see my overall position.

That would also be my preference. But perhaps some would prefer the existing setup. It would only take up a tiny amount of screen space to show both. Maybe not practical with the mobile app. Maybe give the user the choice in settings?

[ArtK78]

How do you like this situation:

 

Sectional Swiss Teams. The event is being run as a Bracketed Swiss Teams, with 47 teams total. The bottom 32 teams are divided into four 8-team brackets and they play a round-robin within their brackets. But that is not the interesting part. The top bracket has 15 teams. Within the top bracket, there is a further division of Flight A teams and Flight X teams. The Flight A teams play only for the overall position among the 15 teams in the top bracket. The Flight X teams, which consists of the lowest ranked 8 of the 15 teams in the top bracket, are competing both for the overall position among the 15 teams in the top bracket and also for the overall position among the 8 teams in the X bracket. Teams are matched up against each other by their position in the event after the first round, without any consideration as to whether they are Flight A or Flight X, as in any Swiss Team event.

 

Since there were an odd number of teams, there is one three-way round-robin match run over 2 rounds. My team was in the round-robin match in the first two rounds. There were six matches, so there were three round-robin matches. After the first two rounds, the lowest ranked three teams are put into the round-robin (with one exception discussed below).

 

After 4 matches, one of the X teams had managed to score 31 VPs on an average of 40. They were put into the round-robin along with two other X teams that had scores of 29 VPs and 18 VPs. There was another team that had 30 VPs after 4 rounds, but since they had just played in the rounds 3 & 4 round-robin, they were not put back into the round robin for the last two rounds (no team plays in two consecutive round-robins regardless of their score).

 

So, these three teams, with 31 VPs, 29 VPs and 18 VPs, played in a round robin for the last two rounds. The team with 31 VPs scored 37 out of a possible 40 VPs in the two round-robin matches, finishing with a total of 68 VPs on an average of 60. This was enough to WIN the flight X event. They actually finished 6th in the Flight A event, only 3 VPs out of 5th. Flight A had 5 overall places.

 

By beating up on the two lowest ranked teams in the event, this team won 7.28 masterpoints by winning the Flight X event.

[barmar]

I think it's been established in the past that Swiss is reasonably good at determining the best and worst teams, but very poor at ranking the teams in the middle. When you combine that with stratification, you can easily get weird results like that. There's probably something theoretically wrong with ranking within X but not taking strats into account when making pairings. But as a part of ACBL's business strategy, which is based on everyone having an occasional opportunity to earn some masterpoints, it's perfect.

 

For the record, since I've had to play in A/X at our sectionals, I don't think I've ever gotten anything other than match awards.